Should Women Be Ordained to Ministry? Deacons or Otherwise? Part 3

 

 

 

Should Women Be Ordained to Ministry? Deacons or Otherwise? Part 3

 

As the twentieth century has seen a great increase in the control that national governments exercise over their citizens, so too with ecclesiastical organizations there is a trend toward centralization, bureaucracy, and an indifference toward inalienable rights.  Well publicized gatherings of Protestant prelates parade in robes, and the press reports the colorful pageantry.  Impressive imitation of popery!  And the same eventual results are to be expected.

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.  . . . [WCF 20:2 WCS].

The changing majorities of a Council or General Assembly which push a conjectural translation of the Bible one year and another year issue Sunday School lessons whose conjectures are still worse, may boast that their theology is not static but dynamic.  A different doctrine every decade—while the orthodox fuddy-duddies keep on believing the same thing all the time!

But what moral chaos there is, when the law of God is abandoned for the latest style of unbelief.  It used to be [Albrecht] Ritschl’s value judgments; now it is paradox; next it will be—who can guess?

The law of God is stable because God is unchangeable.  Those who believe God do not need to change their moral principles with the passing years.  Nor will they change their worship, push the Bible to one side, put an altar in the center, pray to the saints and the Virgin, nor . . . engage a troupe of ballet dancers to fill an empty pulpit.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  Essays on Ethics and Politics.  John Robbins, ed.  (Jefferson:  Trinity Foundation, 1992).  Pp. 21-22.

 

I make the above point because it seems that the larger a denomination becomes, the more centralized its ecclesiastical polity becomes.  I am currently attending a new church plant in Lexington, South Carolina.  It is already becoming apparent that the pastor and the elders do not want any sort of dissent as that would cause a problem with “the peace, purity, and prosperity of this congregation as long as” I am “a member of it.”  I am referring to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as a denomination.  The general synod in 1969 made the decision to allow the ordination of women as deacons; however, it was determined that each session or church within the denomination could decide whether or not to ordain women to the church office of the deaconate or deacon.  

This is a strong indication that there are liberals within the denomination who wish to have women ordained to every church office.  [See:  “Women in the Life of the Church: A Position Paper Approved by the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church:   June 2005”.]  I was shocked to see that one of the authors and signatories on this document was Rev. William B. Evans.  Evans recently announced that he was leaving the ARPC and joining the PCUSA.  His reason is detailed in a blog article he posted here:  A Change in Ecclesial Affiliation for the Ecclesial Calvinist!  Obviously, Mr. Evans is one of the liberals whom I mentioned.  He argues in 2005 that the reason for decline in the ARPC is holding true to the fundamentals.  In order for the denomination to grow, it must accommodate to the times and the culture:

By 2010 or so, however, I sensed that the ARP Church had lost its sense of identity and direction.  When I served as Moderator of the ARP General Synod in 2005 I warned the body that a dire situation awaited if the church did not recover a coherent identity and sense of mission.  Serving on the subsequent General Synod Vision and Strategic Planning Committees reinforced the sense that we were wandering in the weeds and on the edge of precipitous decline.  As a church historian I knew the story well—that ARP identity had historically been predicated on certain praxis distinctives (exclusive psalmody, non-instrumental worship, strict Sabbatarianism, and closed communion), and that by the mid-20th century all of that had dissolved and the church was searching for a new identity.  From 2004 until 2012 I had written/edited the ARP Adult Quarterly Sunday-school curriculum, but beginning in 2012 I began to pull back from my denominational involvements to concentrate on scholarly writing and research.

During this time, I also noticed that the ARPC was becoming more rigidly conservative (largely because of the decline of Erskine Theological Seminary and the rising influence of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC) even as I was growing older and a bit more flexible theologically.  A clarifying moment occurred in the last few years when I chaired a Synod committee to study the issue of women serving in the diaconate in the ARPC.  The Committee presented a sensible report noting that the current policy of allowing women in the ARPC to serve as deacons has worked well for decades, that Scripture can reasonably be read either way, and that no one’s conscience is bound by the current policy.  The floor debate on the report was disheartening, and it was evident that a large minority of the court wanted to do away with women on the diaconate completely.  Particularly clarifying for me was an obviously premeditated speech by a younger minister asserting that those in favor of women in the diaconate were capitulating to the feminist and transgender agenda!  No one called him to task, and I realized at that point that the Overton window had shifted to such a point that I was in the wrong church!

It is here that Evans’s theological compromise is revealed openly.  He straightforwardly admits that he has become “more flexible” with age.  Ironically, his views seem to be inflexible when it comes to acknowledging the plain teaching of Scripture, which he claims can be “read either way.”  I am speculating that the sections in the position paper of 2005 dealing with arguments from the other side were all written by Evans because he agrees with them.  The paper quotes Evans as saying:

While traditionalists have often been tolerant of progressive thinking, they themselves are often not tolerated once women’s ordination is instantiated in a denomination.  That has been the trend in the Church of Scotland, the PCUSA and elsewhere.  The pattern here is for conservatives to be grandfathered for a time, but sooner or later ordination requirements are rewritten to include support for women’s ordination.  This is due primarily, not to liberal meanspiritedness, but to the logic of Reformed polity.  The offices of minister and elder are the foundation of the polity, and everybody has to own the polity, to accept the ground rules of the game.   Reformed churches cannot tolerate the presence of those who would challenge, even implicitly, the legitimacy of a large group of officeholders.  (ARPC Position Paper, p. 4).

Ironically, Evans laments the fact that Ligonier Ministries has had a profound effect on the denomination because many of the ministers are coming from Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina instead of Erskine Theological Seminary in Due West, South Carolina or the campus in Columbia, South Carolina.

There are other issues with the denomination, including other liberal professors at Eskine University and Erskine Theological Seminary.  The church plants that I have observed in the greater Columbia, South Carolina area have mostly followed the pragmatic approach of the church growth movement rather than the biblical mandate to make disciples.  In short, the Westminster Standards are a mere afterthought, an option.  No need to instruct the congregation in the doctrines of the Bible as summarized by the Westminster Standards.

The late Dr. Gordon H. Clark brought up another issue in regards to the ordination of a young man to the ministry:

In addition to these elements of liberty, which particularly concern us in our individual lives, Christian liberty includes liberty of conscience in the face of tyrannical ecclesiastical organizations.  Some years ago a young man presented himself to a Presbytery for ordination.  As he was known to believe that the boards and agencies of that church were infiltrated with modernism, he was asked if he would support the boards regardless of what they did.  When the young man declined to make any such blind promise, the Presbytery refused to ordain him.  [Clark, p. 21]

The church plant that I am attending in Lexington, South Carolina has a new members class.  I am facing a similar decision.  The last vow of the seven vows requires me to promise “loving obedience” and to submit myself “to the government and discipline of this church, promising to seek the peace, purity, and prosperity of this congregation as long as” I am “a member of it.”  But can I do that?  The appointed pastor of the church plant is Jeff Tell.  He is apparently following the accommodation tactics of church growth pragmatism and the leftist theology of the late Tim Keller among others, including James K.A. Smith.

Moreover, the question of the ordination of women as deacons seems to have an obvious answer when considering that the Bible is the final authority in all matters of belief, doctrine, theology, ethics, morality, worship, and practice.  (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 1 Peter 1:24-25; 2 Peter 1:19-21).  As I mentioned already in the first post, the most plain and perspicuous Scriptures against the ordination of women should apply first.  Without going into extensive and detailed exegesis of the passages, I will now show that women should not be ordained to any church office whatsoever, as ordination in the church is restricted to men only.

First, the final authority must be the Bible, not church synods.  When the doctrinal standards of the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith are minimized due to either cultural relativism or ecclesiastical tyranny, it becomes necessary for the laity to stand against such accommodation to culture.  The Bible makes it very clear that the deaconate is restricted to men only, just as the offices of teaching and ruling elders are restricted to men only:

2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, . . . (1 Timothy 3:2 KJV).

12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, . . . (1 Timothy 3:12 KJV)

I should point out that the Bible nowhere makes a distinction between ruling elders, who handle the administration of the church, and teaching elders who handle the preaching of the word and the administration of the two gospel sacraments.  If elders do not teach or preach, following the logic of the liberals, it would seem that the door is wide open for women to become ruling elders as well as deacons.  If any object that the deacons are only to serve tables and not to handle the preaching of the word, it should be pointed out that the deacons in the book of Acts were handpicked by the apostles.  (Acts  6:1-8).  Furthermore, the most prominent deacon mentioned in the pericope is Stephen.  He is said to perform miracles:

And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. (Acts 6:8 KJV)

In other words, the office of deacon is more than just visiting widows, doing pastoral visits, or serving communion.  Even then, women should not be serving communion at the Lord’s table.  None of the men chosen by the apostles were women:

And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: (Acts 6:5 KJV)

The clincher for this argument is that Stephen was stoned after he preached a sermon to the Jews who disagreed with the Gospel message of the apostles:

Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen. 10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. 11 Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God. 12 And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council, 13 And set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law: 14 For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us. 15 And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. (Acts 6:9-15 KJV)

After Stephen preached the council condemned him to death by stoning.  (Acts 7:1-8:1).  Saul was there and participated in the council and the stoning of Stephen.  Does this sound like an office for women?  I think not.

As for the other passages of Scripture, most of the women mentioned are spoken of as being in the company of their husbands.  Priscilla and Aquila are emphasized by Pentecostals as a husband and wife team.  (Acts 18:2). But were they?  Pentecostals like to point out that Priscilla is mentioned first in the text.  (Acts 18:18; Romans 16:3).  But in the other occurrences, Aquila is mentioned first.  (Acts 18:2, 26; 1 Corinthians 16:19).  The Pentecostal argument that seems strongest is also weak:

And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. (Acts 18:26 KJV)

This is a one-time occurrence in the Bible.  As one commentator once said, a doctrine that is mentioned only once in the Bible and is contradicted by other verses is probably a weak doctrine.  Of course, how many times does God need to say something for it to be true?

Here ends this post.  In part 4 I will discuss the biblical evidence for Junia being among the apostles.  Also, I will discuss the four prophesying daughters of Philip.

Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series.